Nobody's Fool

Today.

The end of the five-comic limited. All five comics will also soon be collected in a trade edition, also available at your nearest comic book store.

Stay tuned for the next Foolkiller limited, which will be called White Angels.

New Sheriff In Town

Some art from my first Punisher (#61).

Thank you, Laurence Campbell (interiors).

Thank you Dave Johnson (cover).

Blurb Bitching II: Bride of Blurbs Bitching

Okay, I got a fair number of emails in response to my Blurb Bitching blog entry (some months back) so I thought I’d answer the main questions being put to me.

What makes you more likely to blurb?

1. A personalized letter from the author. I’ve gotten a few really great letters from editors that made me crack a galley, but for the most part, if the author doesn’t even have time to enclose her thoughts, I generally don’t have time to read her manuscript. So don’t leave it solely to your publicist/editor/agent/friend who walks dogs with Thomas Harris. Have them do the hand-off, but make sure you get your voice in there.
2. If the person requesting a blurb from me is familiar with my work, and makes that somewhat clear in the cover letter. Nothing says arrogance like an unpublished writer asking me to read his manuscript who hasn’t bothered to read one of my books. When it came to the authors I asked for blurbs from, I made sure I’d read virtually everything they had in print. An if their oeuvres were unrealistically weighty, I made sure I’d read at least four or five of their novels.
3. I won’t blurb books from vanity presses.
4. If the damn thing looks good. I don’t care if it’s a social novel or a book of lesbian haiku, the first few pages better sing.
5. (And here I feel like Ms. Curmudgeon, your high school college admissions advisor): Don’t make dumb-ass spelling and grammar errors in your cover letter. If you can’t be bothered to figure out the difference between “it’s” and “its” in a one-paragraph cover letter, you probably shouldn’t be pointing a 300-page manuscript my direction.

Will you always blurb your friends even if their books suck?

No. And Ayn Rand better quit asking.

Do you ever tell people you don’t like their books?

No. They’re not asking for a critique, just a blurb. So I’m not reading looking to be helpful from an editorial perspective. I never want to undermine a young (or old, for that matter) author early in her career with a rejection, so I will often beg off mediocre manuscripts due to exigencies of schedule, etc.. Often this isn’t an excuse; much of the time it’s true.

The Punisher

As was announced this weekend, I will be writing the next Punisher arc after Garth Ennis's legendary run on the title. My five-book arc will be called "Girls in White Dresses," and it'll be followed by arcs by Duane Swierczynski and Victor Gischler, both of which I'm really looking forward to. You can tell I'm up for the challenge by the fact that I just wrote "arc" three times in two sentences.

Website for the Sick and Twisted

A buddy of mine forwarded on this link. A pretty amazing look at that most American of conventions: the last meal on death row.

What would you order?

Battlestar Galactica Season 3 Out On DVD

If you don't like Battlestar Galactica, you have no soul.

I'm just sayin'.

Three Books

I recently finished April Smith's Judas Horse and was blown away by her command of character and language. The book is rich and sophisticated and yet never overdone. There's not a sentence in there that's a stretch. She does something I admire very much; she can give us a perfect understanding of a character in a few paragraphs, while never resorting to stereotype. It's a fine line, and she walks it beautifully.

I also finished Marcus Sakey's The Blade Itself -- such an impressive novel, particularly for a debut. He really knows how to ratchet up the suspense, one step at a time. It's a very capable, tight, well-constructed thriller. He unafraid to locate flaws - and fault - within his protagonists, something a lot of writers shy away from. And that makes his protag so much more easy to identify with. We really feel his predicament. It's also such a lean book. Everything in the service of plot. And yet he still manages to cover his bases and get in enough character work to make it a compelling read. I can't remember the last time I read a book that quickly.

Finally, my boy Ross Macdonald's Black Money. And with him, it's best to let him speak for himself:

"They were innocent eyes, not youthful but innocent, as if they perceived only pre-selected facts."

"He was retreating angrily into bad grammar."

"The pictures on the wall were all religious, and there were so many of them that they suggested a line of defense against the world."

"It was a moral hardship for me to walk away from an unclosed case."